Monday

Living at a Bad Address (2004)

Here are a few of my favourite poems from 2004. I don't think any of them have been published; they're not the sort of poems that suit literary journals and are, most of them, written from out of my own experiences and for my own purposes. I hope you enjoy them.

This is a passage from a sermon by Meister Eckhardt, who preached it somewhere around 1320. It is so imaginative, accurate, and so nearly impudent that it captivates me, and I arranged (and slightly edited) it into this poem.

Millerton became a bad address when the mine closed down in the 1960s; many of the houses were removed. Those left, including the pubs and the school, became inhabited by hippies. It is much quieter now. About thirty houses remain, hidden in the gathering bush, and there's a population of about forty people.

During this last August the weather gave us a tough time; for most of the month we lived defensively, battered and close to zero. Then, on the morning of the last Sunday, we woke to a light fall of snow. Everything changed.

Every now and then a word is dragged out of the word bank (where it's been in storage for a time) and put to a more public use. Earlier this year, in the course of Solid Energy's application for a resource consent, this word PROMENA was pushed into my notice. I was interested enough to turn to the dictionary and, from it, to assemble this.

Using e-mail has made me look more closely at the nature of correspondence. E-mail leaves out a lot of the more subtle aspects of communication, particularly nuances, while letters can convey too much. From out of these thoughts this diversion emerged.

1.Jim drove through the video shop — in one window, out the other. You have to take a stand, he says. We expect he’ll go to counselling.2.They put Is on to lithium, and her hair’s falling out. She says she had too much of it but it’s getting into everything. We think it’s psychiatric but the doctor says keep out of the sun.3.Cess woke up in the blackberry again. This time he’s got a bruise on the knee and doesn’t know where it’s come from.4.It’s rained a lot and flooded the sceptic tank. Nev’s tried to pump it out but it gets blocked. Gloria says it’ll dry up soon but that’s only hope.5.The money’s holding out alright. Cess is on the benefit now and that covers the food. Roxy makes a bit from her panel-beating, and Uncle Sim’s board’s a help. We’re not paying the rates.6.You can have some if you want it, and we go without.7.We think of you, but not too much in case we worry. Isn’t home good enough? It’s time you got stuck in and got your teeth into something. Other people do.8.Jennifer pushed Mario down the stairs round the back. He lay there all night and wouldn’t go to the doctor. Netty had to clean up the blood.9.Joe’s skin has mostly gone; we think it was viburnum.

10.When are you going to go up north? Town’s alright, but you don’t do much. Aunty May keeps ringing up asking. It’s family. We ought to be able to say.11.Grandad’s eating funny things, grey mushrooms nettles and stuff. He says they’re good for you, but no-one can tell the difference.12.Helen came round the other day and told us what to do. Bart said ‘Yes, Prime Minister’.13.The dog bit a market survey person at the door. She wanted to know what we watched. Julian said ‘The Weather’, but she didn’t have a chance to ask which one.14.Grandad says you’re not making use of your time. You’ve got to come back, get a job, and raise enough to pay it.15.There’s no use denying.16.That’s the way of things, isn’t it. No matter what they do, it’s always the same.17.Your cousin Jim’s helping with the wash now he’s lost his job at the bank; he says it’s the least he can do, and we think the same, considering.

At the end of March I attended a reunion at the Ch.Ch. Botanical Gardens. It was a gathering of the apprentices who were there in the 1950s. It was a delightful experience (though for me overshadowed by Anna's death) and this poem came from my attempts to find a collective name for the group.

Earlier in the year Solid Energy wanted a publicity photo of me with its C.E.O. Don Elder, and I was asked to meet him after a staff meeting. A delay meant that I had to wait outside with his miners and mine-workers, many of whom regard me as a radical greeney trouble-maker.

He’s been delayed —
there’s trouble down south;
at Spring Creek there are questions,
so we wait,
I in my truck,
the miners at the car park over the road
where they lounge in their overalls
against the bonnets of their utes,
trying to make point to this pointless time,
talking small to pass it.

They’re here for his presentation:
‘Earning Our Right to Mine’.

‘Mining is a temporary use of the land,but a permanent use of non-renewable resources’.
they’re to be told,
before they excavate.

I’m here to be photographed with him,
I, who have written to the paper,the government,
protested in the streets,
who have threatened their jobs,they say;
I’m to be photographed with their boss.

We’re both uneasy,
I at their resentment,
they at my threat,
but in this we are one:
there’s the road between us
and we long to move on,
each to our work:theirs at the mine,mine at the inexpressible.

This incident happened on my way back from Anna's funeral, early in March. I was at Wellington, filing onto the plane to Nelson, and I stepped aside to check on her cat, whom I was bringing home with me. At that moment the incident seemed quite normal, and it wasn't until I was seated in the plane that I realised it.

During the winter Carol and I were invited to a dinner in Westport, presented to farewell the senior DoC officer, who was leaving Buller. At its end, when thanks were given, the hunters were thanked for supplying the meat; this struck me as something I would not hear anywhere else.

After yet another guest fell off my lavatory steps, I decided it was time to obtain an indoor flush toilet. If this was to be done without indebtedness, I had to sell something, so I decided to sell a painting. It was sold for $25,000, which also greatly lessened my mortgage.

This is about a misadventure that put me into the local paper. It happened on a bright afternoon. I was bored, so I decided to cross the creek and fell a few of my poplar trees for firewood. A three hour power cut was the result.

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About the Editor

I've published five poetry collections: City of Strange Brunettes (1998), Chantal’s Book (2002), To Terezín (2007), Celanie (2012), and A Clearer View of the Hinterland (2014), as well as six books of fiction, most recently Kingdom of Alt (2010). I work as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Massey University (ORCID ID: 0000-0002-3988-3926).